In this project funded by the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program of the Chemistry Division, Ognjen Miljanic of the University of Houston will develop fully synthetic self-organizing chemical systems, and study their applications in preparative macromolecular chemistry. The approach is to utilize mixtures of freely equilibrating compounds known as dynamic combinatorial libraries, which respond to selection pressures by amplifying their components that best adapt to the given stimulus. During irreversible chemical reactions, dynamic combinatorial libraries spontaneously self-sort to selectively produce the most reactive components at the expense of their less reactive counterparts. This methodology will be used to develop one-step syntheses of new dendrimers, sensors, and other functional molecules, as well as to rapidly screen and discover new chemical reactions. The broader impacts involve creation of web-based distance learning tools for chemical education, training of undergraduate and graduate students, providing high school students with summer research opportunities in the laboratory, organization of science workshops for K-12 teachers, and the potential scientific and technological impact of the developed self-sorting processes.
The research will further our understanding and control of how molecules spontaneously organize and combine into larger molecules. These insights could be important in elucidating the chemical origins of life, as well as in the design of new industrial processes which could utilize these new chemical reactions to efficiently produce industrial feedstocks, new polymers, or sensors for environmental pollutants.
